NK Abductions: More Than You’d Think

When Kim Jong Il admitted to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2002 that North Korea had kidnapped Japanese citizens, apologized and pledged to end the practice, prospects for a fair account of the extensive abduction of foreigners by North Korea briefly appeared to brighten.

YONHAP NEWS AGENCY

Chuck Downs, executive director of the non-governmental US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, announces a report on North Korea’s abduction of foreigners in Washington, DC, USA, on 12 May 2011.

Nowhere were developments more closely watched than in South Korea. While the abduction of Japanese citizens captured global headlines because of Mr. Koizumi’s trip to Pyongyang, South Korea has had vastly more of its nationals taken by North Korea. Some 83,000 were forcibly moved to North Korea during the Korean War and around 3,800 captured in subsequent years, mostly in the 1970’s and many of them fishermen. Around 17 Japanese nationals have been whisked away by North Korea.

The South Korean government says 517 of its citizens kidnapped since the end of the Korean War remain in the North. However, abductions of South Koreans receive less media attention here than those of Japanese citizens do in Japan, and in another contrast with Japan, successive South Korean governments have been criticized for appearing to soft-pedal the issue with the North, which has always refused to accept that any South Koreans have been held against their will.

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South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which is responsible for cross-border issues, says that the return of abductees is a top priority and says that the issue is always raised at Red Cross and other inter-Korean talks.

An apparent opportunity to tackle the issue came recently with the defection of four North Koreans that were part of a work group that drifted south in a fishing boat in March. North Korea refers to the people as abductees and has repeatedly called for their return. South Korea said it would be willing to discuss their decision to remain in South Korea as part of a dialogue about prisoners of war and abductees still held in North Korea. The North didn’t respond.

The full scale of the abduction issue was brought into relief on Thursday in a report from non-governmental organization U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which said that more than 180,000 foreigners from 12 countries may have been kidnapped by North Korea.

The group called on the U.S. to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism in order to enable legal action to be taken in U.S. courts against North Korea for abductions, which are classified as acts of terrorism. North Korea was delisted in October 2008 by the administration of President George W. Bush. The NGO also urged South Korea and Japan to “keep pressure on the DPRK (North Korea) to take responsibility for its actions… and to raise awareness within the international community of the scope of these crimes.”

Yoo Sun, a spokeswoman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry, says Seoul will continue to make “all out” efforts on the abduction issue. After the brief glimmer of hope in 2002 for a new approach from the North, real change still seems a dim possibility.